A Tulane associate dean is helping to keep an old New Orleans tradition alive. T.J. Stranova, associate dean for student affairs and admissions in the School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, is president of the Italian-American Bocce Club of Greater New Orleans. In the sport of bocce, players throw balls at a target ball called a pallino. The ball that lands closest to the pallino earns a point; after a series of throws, the match goes to the player or team with the most points.

“It’s one of the oldest sports known to man,” Stranova said. “Depending on who you ask, bocce is actually the third most-played game in the world, after soccer and golf.” Basic bocce rules date all the way back to early Rome, where statesmen and rulers played the sport, according to the U.S. Bocce Federation. The sport is often associated with Italian culture and heritage.